zushi's place

1.

In a humanities course I took, I remember that one of the tests you use to figure out whether something is a religion or philosophy is whether it tries to explain what happens after death. Under that definition, Buddhism falls under religion due to its concept of Reincarnation, but Confucianism doesn't because it's only concerned with social relationships, and has nothing to say about dying.

Under that framework, I feel like an atheist through and through. A death means an erasure of possibility to interact, through and through. There isn't someone looking down from above.

2.

The fact that consciousness can suddenly disappear can be pretty jarring, though. Nothing in life quite does that. The belief that things don't “simply disappear” holds sway over us probably because we see examples of it everywhere. From how water turns to ice and back, to how leaves become soil that fertilizes new growth. Animals encode this belief in some way, which is why when you play a magic trick in front of a cat or dog, they will visibly become surprised or puzzled.

In this way death is very jarring. Going from one to none still feels kind of impossible. This is probably one of the reasons we tend to come up with beliefs regarding ghosts and souls.

3.

Two years ago, I remember comforting a friend over his mother's unexpected death. He grieved intensely, and had hallucinations of seeing her and hearing her at times. I have seen this in another case too, where the despair of the grieving caused someone to enter a trance where for a few minutes she was interacting and speaking to the person while looking into thin air. Ghosts are not such a conscious creation. Sometimes, you really want to see the person again, and whether out of pity or mercy or helplessness or compliance, the brain grants you that one wish.

4.

Some call death “the great equalizer”. I could see why. No amount of ability, wealth, status, or any other type of resource could halt an imminent death due to old age. I felt that powerlessness acutely over the past four days.

But as someone who was lucky enough to only have experienced a death of a close one recently, I can't help but think that it's not something to be taken for granted. When I look around, sometimes I seem to visualize aging not as a natural process, but as a stalking predator that will drag away everyone I care about eventually. Thinking about it that way conjures takes away the beautify and tragedy of aging and death but instead casts it almost as a movie villain. Can humans one day overcome aging? I feel like it's possible, and look forward to that day, even if I might not be around to see it.